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Christopher G. Hipp (August 6, 1961 – July 14, 2009) was an American inventor and serial entrepreneur who received a patent for his invention of the
blade server A blade server is a stripped-down server computer with a modular design optimized to minimize the use of physical space and energy. Blade servers have many components removed to save space, minimize power consumption and other considerations, whil ...
, a compact, stripped-down computer server that includes all of the necessary components to operate as a computer while taking up minimal space on a standard rack mount and minimizing power consumption. Hipp was born in Houston. Raised in Dallas, he educated himself in the field of computers after he left college and pursued this avenue after seeing how technology would change the
graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdiscipli ...
realm.Vance, Ashlee
"Christopher Hipp, Who Bolstered Computer Power, Dies at 47"
'' The New York Times'', July 17, 2009. Accessed July 17, 2009.
Until 2000, Hipp ran Digital Media Performance Labs, a Dallas-based company he founded in 1995 that served the technology needs of the graphics and video industry, selling the Silicon Graphics (SGI) line of high-performance computing workstations and software. He established RLX Technologies in The Woodlands, Texas, near Houston, staffed primarily by former employees of Compaq. The company shipped the first blade server in 2000, a technology that allowed more computers to be packed into a smaller amount of space, with many using less power than comparable servers. IBM was an early investor and reseller of RLX's servers. A patent on what became known as the blade server was applied for on July 20, 2000, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded patent number 6,411,506 for a "High density web server chassis system and method" on June 25, 2002, the first commercialized blade server architecture, to Hipp and
David Kirkeby David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
.
Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
bought out RLX in October 2005,Zarley, Craig
"HP Will Acquire RLX To Bolster Blades"
'' InformationWeek'', October 3, 2005. Accessed July 17, 2009.
though Hipp stated that he had only earned $1 from the sale as his holdings had been diluted when stock was issued to venture capital firms to obtain the funding needed to get the business off the ground. By the time of his death, the blade server market had exceeded $5 billion in annual sales, much of it driven by efforts to cut energy costs. Hipp focused on other ventures developing computer technology, most recently at D-Wave Systems, a start-up based in Burnaby, British Columbia, that announced a working prototype of
quantum computer Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Though ...
in 2007. Mark Seager,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...
's head of advanced computing, described Hipp as a "visionary" looking to find "where the next industry innovation would come from and working... to make that happen".


Personal

A resident of Redwood City, California, Hipp died at age 48 on July 14, 2009, while cycling in nearby Palo Alto, having collapsed during his ride. Cause of death was a cardiac arrhythmia. He was survived by his brother, as well as by Lorraine Sneed, his partner of 15 years, who she later said "got him" when she asked Hipp on their first date "if he wanted to come see my SGI". Hipp was described as a "semiprofessional cyclist" and had won a number of races in the Southwest. While competing in the
2009 Tour de France The 2009 Tour de France was the 96th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It started on 4 July in the principality of Monaco with a individual time trial which included a section of the Circuit de Monaco. The race visi ...
, Lance Armstrong released a Tweet of condolence on Hipp's death.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hipp, Christopher 1961 births 2009 deaths People from Dallas People from Houston People from Redwood City, California 20th-century American inventors